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Topic: Other Case Comparisons (Read 2789 times)

This thread is for discussing cases with similar issues to the Zimmerman case. Please do not make new threads for individual cases, but discuss any cases you find relevant in this thread. I intend to keep these forums to Zimmerman, and all thread topics should relate to his case. E.g. I don't want a Marissa Alexander thread or a Scott thread or a thread about an Ohio case. All of them can be discussed in this thread. Thanks.

Can you be convicted of manslaughter in Ohio if you admit killing somebody and the state convinces a jury that a preponderance of evidence shows the killing was not in self defense? If so, it would be the only felony I have heard of where you can be convicted in a US civilian court by less than the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. This seems to be the relevant part of the Ohio Statute.

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(A) Every person accused of an offense is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the burden of proof for all elements of the offense is upon the prosecution. The burden of going forward with the evidence of an affirmative defense, and the burden of proof, by a preponderance of the evidence, for an affirmative defense, is upon the accused.

If you admit killing somebody, the beyond the reasonable doubt standard for the elements of manslaughter is trivially satisfied. However, if you want to claim the killing was justified, the defendant has the burden of showing it to be so by a preponderance of evidence.

A 2009 New York case has popped up in some media as a result of the Zimmerman decision. On April 4 of that year, 17 year old Christopher Cervini (white) was shot to death by 43 year old Roderick Scott (black) in Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. The prosecutor's office originally charged Scott with second degree murder but a grand jury reduced the charge to manslaughter. In December 2009 a predominately white, 12 person jury acquitted Scott. A short video shows the comments from Scott and Cervini's family after the verdict. Just googling using <Cervini Scott> gets you a number of articles.

I find the case a Rorschach test in that people from the Zimmerman camp see close similarities with the recent Florida case while those in the Martin camp see big differences. New York is not an SYG state and standing his ground is what it seems Scott was doing. So I think under the respective laws, Zimmerman's self defense claim was at least as good as Scott's. What really gets me flabbergasted is the total contrast in media response. Team Crump were geniuses or just lucky?

A 2009 New York case has popped up in some media as a result of the Zimmerman decision. On April 4 of that year, 17 year old Christopher Cervini (white) was shot to death by 43 year old Roderick Scott (black) in Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. The prosecutor's office originally charged Scott with second degree murder but a grand jury reduced the charge to manslaughter. In December 2009 a predominately white, 12 person jury acquitted Scott. A short video shows the comments from Scott and Cervini's family after the verdict. Just googling using <Cervini Scott> gets you a number of articles.

I find the case a Rorschach test in that people from the Zimmerman camp see close similarities with the recent Florida case while those in the Martin camp see big differences. New York is not an SYG state and standing his ground is what it seems Scott was doing. So I think under the respective laws, Zimmerman's self defense claim was at least as good as Scott's. What really gets me flabbergasted is the total contrast in media response. Team Crump were geniuses or just lucky?

I'm in the "Zimmerman camp" (I assume this is someone who thinks his shooting was justified) and I think there are quite a few differences with the Scott case.

- In the GZ case, the evidence is unclear, but it appears TM confronted GZ. Scott went out of his house to confront the teens that he suspected of stealing stuff from other peoples cars (sounds like they were).- In the GZ case, it appears TM hit GZ first, and there was no evidence it was provoked (at least not anything illegal). In the Scott case, he told the teens to freeze and that he called the cops and showed his gun.- In the GZ case, GZ shot after taking a beating for about a minute and was screaming for help. Scott didn't have a scratch on him and shot as Cervini came at him. I did not hear if any threats were made by Cervini. I think Scott stated he said "I'm going to get you" or something to that effect, but as I recall, he didn't have any weapons.

I think the Scott case was probably manslaughter and given the limited knowledge I have of the case, I would have voted for that charge. I think that he came outside to confront the teens and told them to freeze and showed a weapon is an aggressive move and that the teens could have reasonably believed that they needed to do something to protect themselves. I understand one or two kids ran, the other, Cervini, came at Scott. I don't know the difference in size of Scott and Cervini, but if the other kids ran off, it was mano y mano and I'm not sure the use of deadly force was reasonable given the situation, but admittedly, I didn't sit and listen to all the evidence.

One teen ran off and another (Cervini's 15 year old cousin) remained and testified against Scott. Similarities people point out are: Both Zimmerman and Scott felt their actions were in defense of the neighbors, they went beyond what they had to do and put themselves in danger because they did not want the a******s to get away. I found the comments from relatives about the gentle nature of both Cervini and Martin, "they never were in trouble" pretty similar, and apparently false.

I think one can say that, objectively, Martin-Zimmerman was no more interesting than many other cases the appear regularly on police blotters. The media, for reasons I still don't fully understand, decided that they wanted to get me, you, the POTUS and many others to pay undue attention to it and they succeeded. Until recently, Cervini-Scott didn't get past the local news in Rochester.

In a release Tuesday, prosecutors said that Tyrone Pierson, 17, was justified in using deadly force on Julius Jerome Jacobs.

Witnesses told police that Jacobs, a 40-year-old community choir director, came after Pierson and two other teens with a large stick following an argument over alleged speeding July 5. According to authorities, Pierson shot Jacobs in the head, killing him

In Miami, a defense attorney for Gabriel Mobley has asked for a delay because he fears the jury pool will be tainted by the anger over SYG. Mobley, who is African American, shot and killed two young Hispanic men after one of them punched a friend of Mobley's.

I don’t think youth under 18 should be covered under “Stand Your Ground”, though I would give them “self defense”. A “child” should almost always be expected to take the option of retreating and running away, as this young man’s friends did. A “child” should not be escalating a fight with an adult, except in the most extreme conditions, since the adult may legally have a 9 mm pistol in his waist band.

Finally, it may well be that the prosecution in this case decided that going for the gun possession charges in a 17 year old would be plea bargained , with little risk of a jury trial to consider “stand your ground”. I would hope that two gun possession charges in a 17 year old should require some significant time in jail, and the endgame metric is length of time in prison for the offenses.

The Ramarley Graham case substitutes a policeman for a neighborhood watchman but there are some obvious parallels. One wonders what would have happened had Zimmerman's case gone to a grand jury as in the Graham case.